


You're the Only Place That Feels Like Home

by theroyalsavage



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: F/M, First Love, Fluff and Angst, Romance, clueless dorks are clueless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 20:56:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3303203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theroyalsavage/pseuds/theroyalsavage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Princess Yona has lost a lot of things, but Hak is not one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're the Only Place That Feels Like Home

Yona doesn’t know much.

  
Since beginning to travel through the kingdom she was once destined to own, she’s come to terms with that fact. She grew up in a castle, sheltered, tucked away, safe and warm inside her father’s cupped hands while he let the rest of the kingdom drain away. When he died, the world she knew died with him. Everything fell out from under her. Yona became blank, like pebbles in a river, washed clean of the pieces of grit and earth that they had formed from.

  
How can she claim to know anything at all about the world? How could she possibly have expected to lead these people, back then, when she’d never once looked one of them in the eye? When she hadn’t stood on the edges of a rain-soaked field while a woman with sad, old eyes placed a tiny, fragile body into the upturned earth? When she hadn’t held the hand of an elderly man, frail and sick and full of stories of his wife, who had been taken from him years ago? When she hadn’t seen women loaded onto a ship and set off to sea like cargo, frightened and helpless and with the immense sadness of the night sky in their hearts?

  
Nothing, nothing. Yona knows nothing.

  
The only thing she feels sure of is Hak.

  
There are times, every so often, when Yona feels like she is floating, cut from her tether. She is disconnected, disoriented, bits of her carved away and left behind in the towns they travel through. She leaves pieces of herself with every suffering person she meets, with every brushing hand and carefully exchanged piece of precious food. Who is Princess Yona? She is nothing, nothing, spirit and air and the motion of the universe. Hak is what keeps her sane. Hak is constant, Hak is truth. When she needs him, he’s there, broad-shouldered and sharp-eyed and sharper-tongued.

  
The change is gradual, so slow and quiet and gentle she barely notices it. It sneaks up on her, until one day she wakes up and she’s full of it, the smell of him – spice and sweat and something uniquely warm and masculine she can’t describe.

  
His eyes, clever and blue and fierce, sharp, electric like the lightning he’s named after.  
His voice, the timbre of it, the way it settles in her chest and spreads to her fingertips.

  
The width of his shoulders.

  
The strength in his hands.

  
It’s a strange sort of warmth, heavy and oppressive and restricting. It makes her throat feel tight, her eyes hurt. And suddenly, she is terrified, because she doesn’t know what’s wrong with her, and she can’t help but act weird, but oh, God, oh, God, she can’t lose Hak.

  
Not him. Not ever.

  
She manages the feeling all right at first, even though her cheeks feel angry and crimson every time he looks at her, but eventually, it becomes a problem. Is she sick? She doesn’t think so. She interacts with the others fine, Shin-ah and Yoon and Jae-ha and Zeno and Tae-jun, but when Hak leans over to correct her grip on the sword or makes some dry comment that makes the others laugh, she feels her stomach fly up into her throat.

  
Losing it. That must be it. Yona is finally losing it.

  
She breaks one night, when the seven of them are sitting around the campfire and she is near him, close enough to feel his heat – he burns brighter than the fire ever could – and she is seized by the sudden, violent urge to touch his face, his lips. Her whole body screams with the desire, and she leaps to her feet, stiff-backed and startled, like she’d been shocked.

  
“Yona?” Jae-ha asks, but she’s already moving, away from their eyes, away from Hak’s heat.

  
“Don’t worry, I’m just getting some air!” she says over her shoulder, offering her best imitation of her normal smile. The rest turn back to their food, but she feels Hak’s gaze on her as she retreats into the tree line.

  
Step forward, step forward. Keep walking. Keep moving. That’s been her policy, since leaving the capital, but this time, her knees aren’t strong enough, and she collapses to the ground. Her heart is pounding in her chest, her breathing too hard and too heavy. She can acutely feel every nerve in her body, every inch and every cell.

  
“Yona?”

  
She jumps, half-formed excuses on her tongue, but Yoon’s face is sympathetic and just a little too knowing, and her voice dies in her throat.

  
“Did you fall?”

  
She shakes her head. “No, I… sat down. Don’t worry about me, Yoon-kun. I just needed…”

  
He ignores her, sinks to the ground beside her, and tucks his legs underneath him. “It isn’t just tonight.”

  
Yona freezes. “What?”

  
“You’ve been acting weird for the past week or two. Whenever the Thunder Beast comes near you, you turn almost the same color as your hair.”

  
She begins to sputter out protests, even though she can feel her face heating up already, but Yoon smirks a little and says, “Don’t try and lie, I’m a genius, remember? I can tell this stuff. What, did you finally realize how he feels about you, or something?”

  
“What? No, I _know_ how Hak feels about me.” Yoon’s eyebrows shoot up, and she plows on, “That’s the problem. He’s my _friend_ , he’s always protected me, and I know it’s because my father asked him to, and I know I order him around and treat him unfairly, so I have no right… I mean, it’s not fair that I… I just—”

  
Yoon’s expression has changed from mildly surprised to exhausted. He reaches up to rub his fingers against his temples. “Because your father asked him to, huh?”

  
She gives up, groaning, and buries her face in her hands. “What’s wrong with me, Yoon-kun?”

  
“Well. I thought it was pretty obvious.”

  
“Not to me.”

  
“No, apparently not. Look, Princess, I’ve been with you and the Thunder Beast a long time, and never once did I get the feeling that he’s travelled with you this long out of obligation.”

  
Yona sniffs a little into her hands. “Then, why…?”

  
“Yona. Look at me.”

  
She does, reluctantly. The younger boy sighs, offers a vague, tired smile. “He travels with you because, that feeling you’ve got in your chest when you look at him? He’s got it, too.”

  
Yona blinks. Her hand comes up, almost automatically, to clutch at the front of her dress. “He… does?”

  
“Yeah.” Yoon sniffs. “Obviously. You know, for such a smart person, you can be kind of an idiot sometimes.”

  
“Princess. What on earth are you doing?”

  
Yona and Yoon both shriek and jolt to their feet, turning as one to face Hak, who is standing on the path behind them with his arms crossed over his chest.

  
Her whole being erupts into kinetic, frenzied energy, every inch of her acutely aware of his presence. He looks at her the same way he normally does, stoic and vaguely amused, and she tries to imagine him reacting to her the same way she is to him.

  
 _Impossible_ , her mind whispers. _Impossible, impossible, impossible._

  
“Unless you two plan on sleeping out here tonight, you should probably come back to camp.”

  
“Yeah, yeah, we’re coming,” Yoon grumbles, dusting his trousers off.

  
“Is there any particular _reason_ you two decided to roll around in mud, or…?”

  
Yona’s gaze jerks down to her dress and her cloak, which, sure enough, are covered in soil. She moans a little and Hak snorts. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

“I was thinking about other things!” _Like your laugh and the way your hair falls into your eyes and what your lips would feel like at my throat…_

  
“Right, of course. Multitasking is very difficult. I remember when you used to have trouble with walking and talking at the same time—”

  
“Shut up, jerk.”

  
“Is that an order, Princess?”

  
Yona doesn’t know much. But when she thinks _I love you_ at Hak’s retreating back, the words feel like a fact.

**Author's Note:**

> For the love of the god please let these two get over themselves and make out a little.  
> (Or a lot.  
> Either works, really.)  
> Comments are always appreciated, thanks for reading!


End file.
